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9.Fire and Ash
Syed Nadir Ali Shirazi, M2F1
There was fire, once, and man was its keeper.
It consumed all it touched, yet he craved its light.
It licked at the edges of forests and steeples,
A fleeting rebellion against the endless night
Man fed it his dreams, his fears, his name.
The fire asked for nothing, yet it took everything.
It forged his empires in the heat of its breath,
Then left him kneeling in the ruins of ash.
For the fire remembers nothing it ever destroys,
But the ash remembers every cost, every pain.
It clung to his hands, his lungs, his soul,
A reminder that creation and ruin are the same.
And yet, from the soot, man stood once more,
Not as a conqueror, but as a bearer of remorse.
The fire is his hunger; the ash, his grief.
Together, they are the makers of eternity.
POETICA
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